


I See Fire

by tricksterity



Series: anything could happen [1]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Battle of Five Armies Fix-It, Established Relationship, Fili and Kili survive, M/M, Post-Battle of Five Armies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-03 20:19:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2886251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tricksterity/pseuds/tricksterity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The battle was over and the blood of elves, dwarves and men covered the battlefield. Thorin had fallen, but his sister’s sons lived on with wounds tempered only by the elves’ healing. </p><p>Bard and Thranduil share an intimate moment brought up by the memories of a dragon long-fought.</p><p>(apologies for the honestly shitty title)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I See Fire

The battle was over and the blood of elves, dwarves and men covered the battlefield. Thorin had fallen, but his sister’s sons lived on with wounds tempered only by the elves’ healing.

 

Laketown was destroyed, half burned, half sunken, and crushed by the corpse of the dead dragon. Bard could still see his hometown from where he stood in the ruins of Dale, his children safely returned to the great hall where food, blankets and fires were. The town was mostly blackened and charred, pillars of smoke stretching towards the sky, though some of the houses still burned fiercely.

 

Bard let out a sigh and heard his sword crash to the ground, no longer having the strength to hold it. He leaned heavily against a crumbling wall and wondered how this had become his life – in just a few short days he had gone from quietly rebelling against the Master to becoming the pseudo-lord of the people of Laketown, who no longer had a town to call their own, helping to lead a battle against orcs.

 

At least Thranduil had immediately offered aid as soon as the news of Laketown’s destruction had reached him in Mirkwood.

 

Bard was not sure what had become of the elf, his whereabouts or his condition, as he had lost him in the fight when he fled to the markets to save his children. The elves’ horn would have sounded had their king fallen in battle, so Bard at least knew that he was alive and well.

 

Soft footsteps came up behind him; just deliberate enough to let him know that the walker was one who could be silent. Familiar footsteps. Then a hand rested on his waist, and a forehead pressed onto his shoulder as the elvenking laid his head upon Bard’s shoulder, and sighed.

 

“How do you fare?” Bard asked quietly, eyes still fixed on the wreck of his home.

 

“Our numbers have halved and elven blood stains the ground, but Legolas is fine, if shaken. Tauriel is healing her dwarf in the healing tents, and I believe the eldest Durin to be much more reasonable than Oakenshield,” Thranduil said quietly. “The dragon sickness is not within him, for he is a son of a daughter, not the son of a son.” His words were measured and slow like they usually were, but Bard could hear the undertones of despair and exhaustion that permeated them. He also heard something that he could not quite name, but it was the same thing that caused Thranduil’s ever-steady hands to be shaking infinitesimally against Bard’s hip.

 

Bard swiftly turned around and took the elf’s face in his hands, noticing the way Thranduil flinched slightly at the hand on his left cheek. He had a few thin cuts down his temples and cheeks, but nothing to warrant such a reaction. Even without knowing the elf so intimately, Bard would be able to see the utter exhaustion in Thranduil’s ice blue eyes.

 

“I get the feeling there is more that you are not telling me,” Bard murmured quietly, and Thranduil allowed his eyes to slip shut, trusting Bard entirely as he leaned in towards him. Bard tried not to let the worry slip out onto his face – he had never seen Thranduil like this, had never seen this bone-deep sense of despair and that something was so very _wrong_ in the elf’s features.

 

Bard had seen the elf full of rage, all impossibly fast movements, sneering and relentless. He had seen him quietly seethe behind a façade of calm, eyes hard and cold as ice chips. He had seen the elf laugh and smile and seen his eyes light up brighter than the stars in the sky, seen those sharp features soften at the sight of Tilda on Legolas’ shoulders, but he had never seen this.

 

It was almost like Thranduil had been emptied.

 

It seemed that utter hopelessness and grief had taken over the man, and he placed all of his trust into Bard’s calloused, mortal hands.

 

“Recent events have brought back memories that I would rather stay buried,” Thranduil murmured gently. Bard wrapped an arm around Thranduil’s waist and maneuvered the two of them through the ruins to the king’s tent, securely shutting the flap behind them. He lowered Thranduil down onto a soft chair and wet a cloth, sitting down next to him to gently wipe away the dark blood that had dried upon his pale face.

 

Bard was not sure what had happened to turn Thranduil’s mood so drastically. He thought back to the battlefield, when the dwarves had arrived, the Ironfoot shouting expletives at the elves. He remembered the cruel, amused smirk that had twisted Thranduil’s face and the boil it brought to Bard’s gut.

 

He remembered when the two of them fought back-to-back in the ruins of Dale, surrounded by orcs, and Thranduil’s fierce determination and ruthlessness in battle, swift movements, efficient and quick.

 

What had changed that brought the elvenking so low? What memories did come unbidden to his mind to do this?

 

Thranduil hissed slightly as Bard drew the wet cloth gently down the left side of his face, and Bard wondered if he had cracked a tooth or something similar on that side.

 

“I can see no injury, Thranduil, so why does it hurt?” he asked quietly. The elf opened his eyes but stared blankly out to the canvas of the tent. He was silent for minutes.

 

“You would see me differently, beloved,” Thranduil whispered so quietly; Bard could barely hear it on the wind. Bard sighed and gripped Thranduil’s chin gently, turning him until the elf looked him in the eyes.

 

“If you think that, then you’re a bigger moron than I thought you were,” Bard teased, and Thranduil rolled his eyes almost imperceptibly. “You are quite literally the most stubborn, arrogant, ridiculous elf I have ever had the pleasure of meeting, and I still feel great love for you. What could possibly change that?” Bard asked, smiling gently but still expressing concern. Warm air drifted in through the bottom of the tent as Thranduil stared at him, expression carefully blank as he assessed the situation.

 

Then he pulled himself to his feet in one swift movement with a loud, frustrated sigh and swept around the table, fingers from his left hand trailing along the burnished wood. Bard couldn’t help but let out a snort at the elf’s behaviour.

 

“Why must you be so…” Thranduil cursed, trailing off as he tried to think of an appropriate word. Bard laughed and pulled himself up too, walking around the table to catch the elf’s hand, entwining their fingers.

 

With his other hand he pulled the silver circlet from Thranduil’s head to place it gently on the table beside them. He cupped the side of Thranduil’s face and stroked a finger gently along his cheekbone, though his eyebrows were raised and waiting for an answer.

 

“Nothing could change my feelings toward you, except, perhaps, allowing them to grow even more,” Bard whispered quietly into the warm air. “Is this… about your wife?” Bard asked cautiously. The subject of Thranduil’s dead wife wasn’t strictly forbidden, but it was not a subject they often broached.

 

“No,” Thranduil replied. “The eldest Durin has promised me her lost gems, and I am at peace.”

 

“I do not wish to pry where I am unwanted, but something is hurting you so,” Bard replied, frowning, barely feeling the orc blood that soaked his shirt begin to stain the skin beneath. He had long since removed the elven-make armor that Thranduil had clad him with before the battle.

 

Thranduil sighed, as if he had given up, and Bard pulled his hand away as if it had been burned. Thranduil’s left cheek began to change; smooth and unblemished skin subsiding like water evaporating in hot air, revealing ruined and burned skin beneath. Hollows of Thranduil’s cheeks had been carved out, glistening red exposed to the warm air. The burns spread up through the elvenking’s closed eyes, and when he opened them…

 

Bard could not speak at the sight of the milky white that stretched across the elf’s eye, blotting out the icy blue and black of his pupil like an overcast sky.

 

Thranduil was half-blind.

 

Suddenly everything made sense.

 

“You have faced a dragon before, haven’t you?” Bard whispered, raising his hand so it hovered mere centimetres from the ruined yet healed skin. The power it must take Thranduil to keep the glamour up for all hours of the day…

 

“I do not wish to dwell on it,” Thranduil snapped, and the glamour re-appeared as though the destroyed skin beneath it had never existed. Bard sighed, and then couldn’t help but let out a little chuckle, and Thranduil looked to him as though he would kill him on the spot.

 

“I… I am sorry, my love,” Bard managed between laughs. He managed to calm down enough to grip Thranduil’s hand tighter in his, to show he meant no disrespect. “You think your vanity so important that it would honestly change what I thought of you?”

 

Thranduil’s eyes widened.

 

“When we first met at the river’s edge you would keep me on your right, and now I notice that you keep me on your left. You share a mannerism with my late great-aunt, who also ran her fingers across tabletops that she could not see. You trust me enough to keep me in your blind spot, and that says more than words ever could,” Bard smiled, his lips pulling up into a smile.

 

Thranduil’s eyes were filled with both no emotion and too much, and before Bard could speak another word his lips were otherwise occupied. Smooth hands clutching either side of his face, words unspoken spilling out through lips that said nought. Those fingers slipped down through Bard’s hair to rest on the small of his back, pulling him forward, grasping tightly.

 

Thranduil finally pulled back to give Bard air, and rest his forehead on the bowman’s. Bard could see that his lips were pulled aside in one of his rarest, brightest smiles that drowned out the stars in the night sky.

 

Bard could scarcely remember the days when he thought that Thranduil was cold and unfeeling, more so than any of the fair folk he had seen.

 

“Come, beloved,” Thranduil said, heart full of love and brightness, previous fears and emptiness long forgotten. “Let us find your children, and mine. We have lost many of our own, but must celebrate those of us who have survived.”

 

With a bright smile and a tug of the hand, Bard allowed himself to be whisked away into the ruins of Dale by an elvenking who had not smiled so bright for near three centuries.

**Author's Note:**

> Imagine Thranduil's smile as that amazing one Lee Pace does as Ned the Piemaker.
> 
> Apologies if this seems out of character for the two of them, I tried to keep their personalities and dialogue as true to the films as possible while changing it to them being in a fully committed, long-term established relationship.
> 
> At the moment this is a standalone but I have the basic plans for a few prequels to this, explaining how Bard and Thranduil got together, their little pseudo-family with Legolas, Sigrid, Tilda and Bain etc. I might also have a sequel but I'm not sure at this point. Let me know if you want more! :)
> 
> **If you liked my writing and you're interested in me writing something for you, click[HERE](http://tricksterity.tumblr.com/post/140544637431) for more information! **


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